Friday, September 21, 2012

Obama’s Fatcats


By Michelle Malkin -- July 18, 2012
Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney’s overseas investments. It’s time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil.
Republicans can’t make the fatcat-narrative attacks go away by making nice with the White House — or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president’s own bad-bank entanglements. Indeed, the New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit their work to the White House for unprecedented review, editing, and “veto power.”
Fortunately, the truth manipulators and message massagers haven’t gotten to this column yet. So, let’s talk sleazy Democratic party–backed banks, shall we?
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial-industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidant James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel “earned” at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidant Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution’s Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.
Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.
Superior Bank. One of the Obamas’ oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime-loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family’s multibillion-dollar fortune, Pritzker’s enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.
Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias. As I reported then, Giannoulias’ Greek-immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted Mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It’s the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate–campaign funds. And it’s the same place that a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias — convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko — used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.

Chicago’s former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real-estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.

ShoreBank. The “progressive” Chicago-based community development bank, a “green” financial institution whose mission was to “create economic equity and a healthy environment,” folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social-justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.

Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home-loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials, and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
“These relationships helped [Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime-loan king Angelo] Mozilo increase his own company’s profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers,” according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm-election season. Since then, Obama’s Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.

Among the influence-peddling operation’s most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 reelection bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.
Bank of America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA’s political-action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.

Embarrassed by the party’s ties to shady Bank of America, progressives are now trying to rebrand the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will give his nomination-acceptance address. They’re referring to it as “Panthers Stadium” instead.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE  www.nationalreview.com   

Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown? A cover-up in the making?
By Stanley Kurtz

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. Ayers was pictured in a 2001 article for Chicago magazine, stomping on an American flag, and told the New York Times just before 9/11 that the notion of the United States as a just and fair and decent place “makes me want to puke.” Although Obama actually launched his political career at an event at Ayers’s and Dohrn’s home, Obama has dismissed Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” For his part, Ayers refuses to discuss his relationship with Obama.

Although the press has been notably lax about pursuing the matter, the full story of the Obama-Ayers relationship calls the truth of Obama’s account seriously into question. When Obama made his first run for political office, articles in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald featured among his qualifications his position as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation where Ayers was a founder and guiding force. Obama assumed the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office, and almost certainly received the job at the behest of Bill Ayers. During Obama’s time as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers’s own education projects received substantial funding. Indeed, during its first year, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge struggled with significant concerns about possible conflicts of interest. With a writ to aid Chicago’s public schools, the Annenberg challenge played a deeply political role in Chicago’s education wars, and as Annenberg board chairman, Obama clearly aligned himself with Ayers’s radical views on education issues. With Obama heading up the board and Ayers heading up the other key operating body of the Annenberg Challenge, the two would necessarily have had a close working relationship for years (therefore “exchanging ideas on a regular basis”). So when Ayers and Dorhn hosted that kickoff for the first Obama campaign, it was not a random happenstance, but merely further evidence of a close and ongoing political partnership. Of course, all of this clearly contradicts Obama’s dismissal of the significance of his relationship with Ayers.

This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama’s leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Cover-Up?

Unfortunately, I don’t yet have access to the documents. The Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library agreed to let me read them, but just before I boarded my flight to Chicago, the top library officials mysteriously intervened to bar access. Circumstances strongly suggest the likelihood that Bill Ayers himself may have played a pivotal role in this denial. Ayers has long taught at UIC, where the Chicago Annenberg Challenge offices were housed, rent-free. Ayers likely arranged for the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to be housed in the UIC library, and may well have been consulted during my unsuccessful struggle to gain access to the documents. Let me, then, explain in greater detail what the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) records are, and how I have been blocked from seeing them.

Initially, as I said, library officials said that I could examine the CAC records. I received this permission both over the phone and in writing. The subsequent denial of access came with a series of evolving explanations. Is this a politically motivated cover-up? Although at this stage it is impossible to know, it is hard to avoid the suspicion. I also have some concerns for the security of the documents, although I have no specific evidence that their security is endangered. In any case, given the relative dearth of information about Barack Obama’s political past, there is a powerful public interest in the swift release of these documents.

Access Approved
When I learned that the CAC records were housed at UIC Library, I phoned and was assured by a reference librarian that, although I have no UIC affiliation, I would be permitted to examine the records. He suggested I phone the Special Collections section of the library and set up an appointment with a special collections librarian. This reference librarian also ran a search for me and discovered that, in addition to the CAC records, one file folder in the UIC Chancellor’s Office of Community Relations archive contains information on CAC from 1995.

I then spoke with a special-collections librarian and was again assured that I would have access to the CAC records. I was told that, while I could not personally make copies of the material, I could identify documents of interest and have copies made by the library, for a fee. I set up an appointment to meet with the special-collections librarian, and she suggested that I e-mail her the information on the CAC-related chancellor’s documents the reference librarian had discovered, and confirm my appointment time. After I did so, this special-collections librarian forwarded my message to a graduate assistant.

The graduate assistant then e-mailed to let me know that, while the CAC collection had been “processed,” the “finding aid” had not yet been put online. (The “finding aid” is a detailed document of over 60 pages specifying the topics covered by each of the 947 folders in the collection, and showing which boxes hold which folders.) Because the finding aid was not yet online, the graduate assistant attached a copy to her e-mail, inviting me to browse it and identify documents of particular interest, so that the library could have some of the CAC material out and ready for me immediately upon my arrival. I wrote back indicating that I would like to see the single CAC-related folder from the chancellor’s archive, and further identifying 14 boxes from the main body of CAC records containing folders of special interest. Having received clear and repeated representations from the UIC library staff that I would be granted access to the CAC records, I arranged a trip to Chicago.

Access Denied

What follows is more detail than some readers may want to know, but it seems important to get it on record. If a body of material potentially damaging to Barack Obama is being improperly embargoed by a library, the details matter.


Just before my plane took off, I received an e-mail from the special-collections librarian informing me that she had “checked our collection file” and determined that “access to the collection is closed.” I would be permitted to view the single CAC-related file from the Office of the Chancellor records, but nothing from the CAC records proper. I quickly wrote back, expressing surprise and disappointment. I noted that I had arranged my trip based on the library’s assurances of access, and followed up with questions about whether access was being denied because I was unaffiliated with UIC. I also asked who had authority over access to the collection, suggesting that I might be able to contact them and request permission to view it.

After arriving in Chicago, I found a message, not from the special-collections librarian, but from Ann C. Weller, professor and head, Special Collections Department. In answer to my question of who had authority over access to the collection, Weller said, that “the decision was made by me” in consultation with the library director. Weller stated that no one currently has access to the collection and added that: “The Collection is closed because it has come to our attention that there is restricted material in the collection. Once the collection has been processed it will be open to any patron interested in viewing it.”

I responded to Weller by recounting the clear and repeated representations I had received from library staff that I would be granted access to the collection, adding that I had arranged my trip in large part because of these assurances. I then noted that I had studied the CAC finding aid with considerable care. It was clear from that finding aid, I said, that only five out of the 947 folders were in any way restricted. Four folders, containing auditor’s reports, where clearly marked, in bold type, “THESE FOLDERS ARE RESTRICTED VIA ANNENBERG CHALLENGE until further notice.” A fifth folder, containing records of eight CAC Board of Directors meetings in 1995, when CAC was first set up, had a notation nearby with the word, “Consent.” It would be a simple matter, I said, to pull these five folders, allow me access to the remaining 942 folders, and contact the relevant authority for consent to view the records of the 1995 board meetings. After all, I added, Weller herself had said that, other than the restricted folders, the collection ought to be open to all patrons.
I also pointed out to Weller that she had not quite entirely answered my earlier question about who has authority over access to the collection. So I asked who, precisely, holds the authority to bar or permit access to the restricted folders. I added the following thought: “Libraries, of course, exist, not to restrict information, but to make it available to the public. I would hate to think that UIC library was doing anything less than all it could to permit public access to these important materials.”

Weller replied to this message by dropping the restricted documents issue and saying instead that the donor of the CAC records “has alerted us to the fact that we do not have a signed deed of gift.” According to Weller, this means that UIC’s library has no legal right to make the material available. The donor, said Weller, is now working with UIC library to resolve the problem, and “we hope to be able to provide access within the next few weeks.”

Replying to Weller, I briefly noted some elements of her account that I found puzzling. I added that Weller had still not answered my question about who the donor is, and/or who holds controlling authority over the collection. I closed by alerting the library to my intention to come in that day to examine the single CAC-related folder from the chancellor’s records that I did have permission to see. Later that day, I examined that one folder, took notes, and asked for the entire folder’s contents to be copied and mailed to me. I have received no further reply to my reiterated question about the identity of the donor.

Shifting Story

There are a number of disturbing elements to this story. Recall that, according to the graduate assistant, the collection had, in fact, already been “processed.” Yet Weller’s initial message to me used the unprocessed state of the collection as a reason for restricting access. And when I pointed out how easy it would be to remove the restricted files, Weller quickly came up with yet another reason to block access. At the moment, I have no way of verifying Weller’s claim that the library has no signed deed of gift, but how likely is it that a collection of such size and importance would have been housed in the library, and listed in publicly accessible international library catalogues, without this very basic detail having been attended to? It’s also puzzling that UIC now raises the absence of any formal agreement with the donor — and thus the absence of any formal restrictions by the donor — as a reason to deny access to a collection placed in library custody precisely to facilitate public access.

The question of who the donor is and/or who holds formal authority over access to the collection, is also critical. It’s notable that after trying to ascertain this information several times, I have still not received a proper reply. One obvious question is whether Bill Ayers and perhaps even Barack Obama himself may be connected to the donor. Obama began his CAC board chairmanship in early 1995, and stepped down from the chairmanship in late 1999, though he remained on the board until CAC phased itself out of existence in 2001. At that time, CAC handed over its remaining assets to a permanent new institution, the Chicago Public Education Fund. Obama served on this Fund’s “Leadership Council,” from 2001 through 2004, overlapping with council service by Bill Ayers’s father, Thomas, and Ayers’s brother, John. Bill Ayers, as noted, was a CAC founder, its guiding force, and co-chaired CAC’s powerful “collaborative.” CAC appears to have been housed at UIC because of Ayers’s connection to the school.

So informally, and perhaps formally, it would appear that both Ayers and Obama may be closely connected to the donor of the CAC records. In fact, Ayers himself may be the donor. In raising her belated point about the absence of a signed deed of gift, Ann Weller indicated that she had been alerted to the fact by the donor, and would henceforth be working with the donor to provide access “within the next few weeks.” One can at least speculate that Weller might have been in touch with her UIC colleague, Bill Ayers, either because he actually holds formal authority as donor, or because he is granted de facto authority over the papers by whatever entity has formal control. One can also speculate that, as former CAC board chair, board member, and as an official of CAC’s successor organization, Barack Obama himself might have had, or may still have, some sort of formal or informal role in this process. Could this help explain why I have never received a clear answer to my question about the identity of the donor?

Obama and Annenberg
I expect to follow up this piece with an examination of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and what it suggests about Obama’s personal, financial, and ideological ties with Bill Ayers. I will also discuss what Obama’s CAC connection might suggest about Obama’s links to various radical groups, about the political character of his service at various foundations, and about his leadership record. I treated some of these issues in “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” and have just explored them, using new material, in an article in the current issue of National Review, entitled “Senator Stealth.” Further information on the Obama-Ayers connection can be found in “Barack Obama’s Lost Years.” Of course there is no substitute for access to the CAC records, but at over 60 pages, the extremely detailed “finding aid” to the CAC records by itself provides important new information that helps extend our understanding of Obama’s political past. I will shortly have more to say about what the finding aid reveals. And while there were no major revelations in it, the contents of the folder from the chancellor’s archive are also of some interest.

We already know a good deal about Obama’s service at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That information paints a disturbing picture, and one sharply at odds with Obama’s claim that Bill Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” A number of bloggers, including, for example, Tom Maguire, at Just One Minute, have done excellent work on the CAC issue. (See
here and here.) But the key reporting on the Obama-Ayers connection via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has been done by Steve Diamond, at Global Labor and Politics. (See especially this important post of June 18, 2008.) Sad to say, the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored the issues so powerfully raised by Diamond, and discussed at length by various bloggers, even though Obama’s service at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge raises serious questions about the veracity of his account of his relationship with Ayers. Access to the CAC records promises to provide a treasure trove of documentary evidence fronting on this and many other critically important issues, from Obama’s policy views, to his political-ideological alliances, to his leadership abilities.

Access and Security

There will be time for substantive discussion later. The immediate concern is to swiftly gain public access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, and to ensure the security of these documents in the meantime. Despite UIC library’s claim that it hopes to be able to provide access within the next few weeks, the apparently shifting and contradictory character of their reasons for denying access have left me with a low level of confidence in these assurances.

I intend to continue my efforts to examine the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to take notes, and to order extensive photocopies, to be mailed to me and/or received personally by me, in a timely fashion. I call on the UIC library to take extraordinary steps to secure the documents until such time as this issue is resolved. The public needs clear assurances that none of the CAC records have been, or will be, damaged or removed. I call on UIC library to reveal the name of the donor of the CAC records and/or to specify the person, persons, or body that currently hold authority over these records. I also call on Barack Obama to voice support for the swift release of these records.

Libraries are designed, not to unduly restrict information, but to make it available to an interested public. This country is now mere months away from a momentous presidential election in which a central issue is the political background and character of a relatively young and unknown senator. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge records almost surely contain important information on Senator Obama’s political associations, policy views, ideological leanings, and leadership ability. His role as board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is the most important executive experience Obama has held to date. Given this, the public has an urgent right to know what is in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records.
Barack Obama -- Connect the Dots
The BROADWAY BANK:   
 Update [2008-1-27 18:33:9 by susanhu]: Giannoulias is directly connected to the indicted Tony Rezko, who goes on trial on February 25th, following a several-year investigation by the F.B.I. with an indictment written by the U.S. Attorney's office headed by Patrick Fitzgerald:


http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:S1R4GosU2U0J:www.mydd.com/story/2008/1/27/161410/392+Look+Before+You+Leap+Obama%27s+Mobbed-Up+Allies&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
 

The BROADWAY BANK (owned by Giannoulis and his family) LOANED REZKO PROJECT $11 MILLION DOLLARS: "Rezko and his then-partner in Chicago-Hudson LLC, Daniel Muhra [sic], purchased the site in 2001. But preonstruction sales for the units, priced from about $300,000 to $600,000, floundered, and construction never proceeded. In early 2002 the partnership borrowed about $10.9 million from Chicago-based Broadway Bank to carry the land, according to the bankruptcy filing." -- From the Chicago Tribune on 5/23/06



The BROADWAY BANK (owned by Giannoulis and his family) HELPED TONY REZKO'S REZMAR CORP. FINANCE A 24-STORY CONDOMINIUM: "When Mahru was a partner with Rezko, their company -- Rezmar Corp. -- was helped by Thomas' Carnegie Realty Partners to obtain financing to build a 24-story condominium complex at Chicago and Hudson, a project that ultimately did not get off the ground. The financial institution that backed that deal was Broadway Bank, which is owned by the family of state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Elected in the Democratic sweep last year, Giannoulias has had to answer criticism over loans his bank made to reputed crime figures. "Carnegie brought us to Broadway," Mahru said, and introduced him to Giannoulias' father. "We paid Carnegie a 1 percent commission on the loan, which is normal and customary." A spokesman for Giannoulias referred questions to the bank, which could not be reached." -- From the Chicago Sun-Times, 5/5/07

And, of course we know that the Broadway Bank was the bank at which Obama opened his campaign fund account.

Alexi Giannoulias -- Broadway Bank
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2006/11/obama_endorses_.html

Giannoulias and the Broadway Bank
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=democratas&message.id=10036

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=56859  Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the old Moscow-controlled Communist Party US Obama mentor identified as communist Frank Marshall Davis 'discussed American imperialism, colonialism, exploitation'  Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, confirmed that Davis is the "Frank" in Obama's book.

http://www.babalublog.com/archives/007397.htmlObama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat.

 Rashid Khalidi and William C. Ayers
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57231
Rashid Khalidi--Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president.

Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
 Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s.

http://leevo.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-more-and-more-terrorist-ties.html 

Ali Abunimah
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57341

Ali Abunimah, a Chicago-based Palestinian-American activist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian online publication, recalls introducing Obama at one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha Palestinian camp in the West Bank.

Obama's 1999 fundraising for the Palestinian Deheisha camp raised the eyebrows of one senior Israeli security official who was contacted yesterday for comment on the issue. The official, who was not aware of Obama's fundraising, noted Deheisha, which is located near the city of Bethlehem, had a "very active" Palestinian terror apparatus in 1999, carrying out scores of deadly shootings against Israeli civilians that year.

James S. Crown - Military Earmark's
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/13/
Crown and his wife, Paula Crown, are members of Obama's National Finance Committee and have raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign.
 
A Military Earmark's Ties to Obama Money Man
By Matthew Mosk
Sen. Barack Obama requested $8 million for a military defense contractor that has close ties to one of his most prodigious fundraisers.

 http://list of barack obama earmarks
 Alsammarae-Obama-Rezko connection

Obama's Syrian Connection
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/11/2008

Mr. Auchi traveled by private aircraft to Midway Airport in Chicago and then to a fete at the Four Season Hotel, where he met with his business partner in Chicago real estate, Mr. Rezko, as well as with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Also present that night, according to a fresh report by James Bone and Dominic Kennedy of the London Times, was State Senator Barack Obama, who had recently won the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat *Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company, lent money to (an) Obama fundraiser in May 2005 *Panda Express

Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group.

http://www.jewishpress.com/print.do/30283/Obama_Served_On_Board_That_Funded_Pro-Palestinian_Group.html
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Democrat presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama's controversial pastor http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=59044 

Obama’s skeletons
The Weather Underground
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/15/obamas-terrorist-ties/

State Sen. James Meeks, who is now a delegate pledged to Obama.
cbs2chicago_com - Cable Channel Raises Questions About Obama, Meeks.mht
by Mike Flannery

"We don't have slave masters, we got mayors," Meeks said then while preaching. "But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated. You got some preachers that are house n------. You got some elected officials that are house n------. Rather than them try and break this up, they're gonna fight you to protect that white man."

Obama Attended Hate America Sermon
http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=544758&articleId=316175&func=5&channel=People+Connection

Sunday, March 16, 2008 7:14 PM
By: Ronald Kessler

In his press release, Obama claimed, The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity [United Church of Christ] or heard him utter in private conversation.

Mr. Obama: Messrs Rezko, Ayers, Khalidi and Auchi
http://www.humanevents.com:80/article.php

John Batchelor is a novelist and the host of the John Batchelor Show on WABC in New York and KFI in Los Angeles.

His years in Chicago law work and urban development, and from his career in the Springfield, Illinois senate, speak to the quality of his judgment and to the strength of his character.  Four associations in particular go the heart of the inquiry ahead in order to ask and answer the fundamental questions about who is Barack Obama.

Opponent questions Giannoulias connections to mob
 http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=4609432#bodyText
Thursday, September 28, 2006 | 5:13 PM
By Andy Shaw

September 28, 2006 (WLS) -- New questions were raised Thursday about a political candidate's alleged connections to organized crime. Alexi Giannoulias is a Democrat running for Illinois state treasurer. His Republican opponent, Christine Radogno, is asking these questions. But she isn't the only one.

bama: It Looks Like There’s More Where Wright Came From

Fil under: Taxes & Government— TBlumer @ 4:47 pm
Barack Obama may have at least one additional “close religious adviser” to explain away.
BizzyBlog » Obama It Looks Like There’s More Where Wright Came www.bizzyblog.com/2008/03/19/obama-it-looks-like-theres-more-where-wright-came-from/

Salem Baptist Church Pastor James Meeks is alleged to be one of Obama's advisor's.
http://wearesc.com/forums/showthread.php?p=355860#post355860

If true this can't be good for his cause for associations are everything.
 On a side note "The new Black Panther Party" has a link on Obama's website...hmmmm?
 That will not help his campaign either....the ship is sinking. Americians Republicians and democrats alike are smarter than this.
 Obama Web Site Still Carries New Black Panther Party Endorsement
 by FOXNews.com

 Wednesday, March 19, 2008
 A copy of the page on Barack Obama's Web site where the New Black Panther Party gives its endorsement.

Minister Louis Farrakhan
 http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/trumpet-gala-2007.html
 Obama's spiritual advisor gives Farrakhan his "lifetime achievement" award
Here's the Youtube video created last November to celebrate the awarding by Sen. Barack Obama's spiritual advisor since 1987, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., of his

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter Award to The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

Michael "Jaws" Giorango
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/012584.php
Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.

National Foreign Trade Council v. Giannoulias
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barack_Obama_and_campaign_contributor_Alexi_Giannoulias

Alexi Giannoulias—a "man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure" and "who became Illinois state treasurer" in 2006 after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "vouched for him"—"pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator's Oval Office bid," Charles Hurt reported September 5, 2007, in the New York Post.

Abongo "Roy" Obama
Abongo "Roy" Obama is a militant Muslim activist in Kenya who has urged his younger brother to embrace his African heritage and supports implementation of Sharia law.
http://www.nowpublic.com/politics/obama-s-brother-capture-nation-s-attention



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